


You're gonna make it, Red

by hotdadicus



Category: Fortnite (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, but can i get an f, don't worry they'll respawn eventually, not super graphic content - some mentioning of blood and violence, old map / chapter one era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:42:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21821632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotdadicus/pseuds/hotdadicus
Summary: Sleuth finds Gumshoe in a Field of Red Flowers.
Relationships: Sleuth/Gumshoe
Kudos: 3





	You're gonna make it, Red

**Author's Note:**

> vaguely a sequel to in a field of red flowers; written for an old friend  
> loosely incorporates a hc that the athenians live normal lives on the island and are summoned to compete against their will

Like a shark, he had to keep moving or else he would die.

Everything around him felt heavy: the trench coat he had finally shed in favor of an impromptu tourniquet; the rain violently battering against his face, amalgamating with his tears; the woman in his arms, head limp in the crook of his elbow, miserably aiming a silenced pistol above her breasts, just in case an adversary lined themselves along the edge of the storm. He refuses to believe his body is giving up, but resistance to the storm cloud looming overhead is futile.

He never thought he’d see her like this: visage twisted in agonizing pain while her free hand gropes around her navel, clutching at the scraps of poplin in bloom, quickly blossoming from beige hue into a brilliant crimson. Her blood is staining his shirt now, and he wishes their bodies could fuse into one so he can absolve her pain and end his crying.

“Sleuth … take my medkit. _Please_.”

He presses her lips into his chest.

Three days ago he found an envelope at the agency’s ingress. Its seal was nothing less of an omen, the mark of hierarchy whose form of entertainment was as unusually cruel as it was malicious. Against better judgment - waiting to face a bitter fate alongside his cohorts - his impulsive, trembling fingers revealed something he had long been fearing: Gumshoe’s name in bold, black ink at the top of the letter. Nothing else mattered - not the date of the tourney nor a list of summoned competitors - he only saw her name alone and soon the words below morphing into an epitaph when his eyes began to cross.

‘ Here lies Gumshoe. No one could save her. ’

“No … no, you’re gonna make it, Red. Promise.”

He couldn’t save her. It was rare to see a volunteer’s application in the mailbox, let alone consider their plea for a particular partner. They were merely seen as cannon fodder, thrown among the wolves for amusement. Sleuth hadn’t seen Gumshoe nor her partner on the bus, but instead found her crawling through a field of red flowers later on, no doubt cursing under her breath every time her lungs collapsed and her body followed. The flash of recognition in her eyes - a transition from panic, to confusion, to comfort - once he had taken her into his arms was all the adrenaline rush he needed. Now, his body was giving up.

“I won’t make it.” Gumshoe winces. “Please - you need it more than I do.”

Sleuth feverishly shakes his head. “No - don’t - please stop saying that. I’m going to save you. You’re gonna be okay.”

Gumshoe was like a rose; beautiful red petals that aroused his curiosity and wooed his aching heart, yet an underbelly of thorns coiled around his middle whenever he came near. A spitfire who had no time for an affair, but instead sought out a significant other with whom she would eventually settle down with. He always thought she was above him - perched facing the sun in a purple vase. Sleuth can’t bear the sight of her paling cheeks and the hollow, black circles lining her eyes. He wants to remember Gumshoe in her prime: healthy, strong, and standing by his side instead of piteously yowling alone, left to die among the flowers.

Finally, his knees buckle as his body succumbs to the storm.

As he comes to, moments after his eyes adjust to the purple haze boiling his body from the inside-out, he expects - he _hopes_ \- to see Gumshoe crawling towards the edge of the storm, the ironic separation between a monochromatic end and a new, full-spectrum beginning, complete with enemies perched atop mountains, scoping into the storm with their sniper rifles, Gumshoe’s partner who left her to bleed out, and more flowers whose petals will soon wilt and die once the rain hits. Instead, he sees her right beside him, expressionless, her lips gone from red, to purple, to ghastly blue, eyes staring directly into his and nowhere else. There’s no other place she’d rather be.

Her lips move, but he cannot hear her. Everything around him his silent, save for the deafening tone in his ears. He sees the word ‘ _you_ ' and somewhere in his mind he thinks that they’re together, alone, laying in bed following their first night of copulation after she’s finally admitted her true feelings: ‘ _I love you_ ’.

The bullet in the back of his neck reminds him that this is no dream, but a nightmare.


End file.
